Blood Loss: The Chronicle of Rael Read Online Free

about the room, and one has its face turned his direction.  His mother’s eyes stare back at him without recognition, without the glimmer of life.  Rael is sure that one is his father as well, and he cannot immediately recognize the other two.  He dumbly keeps looking around the room until his gaze settles on a figure.
    Standing in the middle of all this is a demon the likes of which Rael has never imagined.  The thing is huge, seeming to dwarf the room about him, as if he is somehow taller than the house itself and yet still fits below its ceiling.  The demon is armored in full plate mail regalia.  The armor covers his entire body except for his head, and it would be beautiful were it not for the hellish surroundings that accompanied it.  The demon’s head is exposed for all to see – a polished and fleshless skull that leers back at onlookers, instilling so much fear with both its grin and the lifeless sockets where eyes should be.  Between his feet which are encased in steel sabatons is the remains of what looks like a brown robe.  It burns.  Clutched in the demon’s hands is the largest sword Rael has ever seen.  At least six feet long, its wielder must be a demon, for surely no man could ever fight with such a thing effectively, and blood coats half of the blade up to the tip.
    Then comes the worst of it – the demon’s voice.  Rael can barely hear it over the roar of the fires consuming his home, and it is as frightening as the demon’s visage.  The voice is choked, strangled as if a hand is clamped over the demon’s neck, and it almost gargles forth in a most sickening manner.  It speaks in Westerner, but it is accented in such a way as to make one think whatever mouth issued the voice is not meant to form such words.
    “Boy,” the demon says, “come with me.”
    Two men burst into the home through the door that is slightly ajar, and they stop dead in their tracks either for the fire or the armored form in their way.  Rael can see little of them, except that one is older with a nose that was once broken and never healed right.  The demon wheels and brings his sword around in a wide arc that hacks deeply into the broken nosed man’s midsection, very nearly cutting him in twain.  Before the other can react or even think, the sword has neatly skewered him on its point.  The demon pulls the sword free, and as the man slowly falls to his knees in shock, he brings the blade back around in a massive arc to behead him.
    Rael has seen blood before of course, as has any child approaching adolescence, but never in his life has he seen so much human blood.  Once, one of the boats caught an incredible tuna - the stuff of legends.  It was bigger than his father, and that monstrosity had bled horrifically all over the dock.  But that was a fish.  This is the blood of men, and as it spreads across the floor, it sizzles when it meets patches of fire.  Rael closes his eyes when he lays his eyes on entrails that spilled from the broken nosed man’s belly.  The smell is far worse than that encountered when cleaning fish, and Rael thinks he may vomit.
    “More will come to kill you, boy,” the demon says.  Rael opens his eyes to see that the demon holds a gauntleted hand out to him.  “Come with me or die.”
    Rael just stares at the open hand.  No words come from his mouth, and his brain cannot even comprehend what action he should take.  The demon seems to growl, perhaps in annoyance or frustration, and the sound is barely audible over the creaking of the timbers holding up the roof.  The armored thing steps forward and pulls Rael up to his feet.  He then scoops Rael up with one arm, still clasping the sword in the other, and carries the boy from the burning home.
    Outside the air is clean and cool, as the smoke and heat billow up into starry sky.  The moon provides little light, but the village is coming to life as homes begin to light up from the inside.  Three men run hurriedly toward